A Higher Power

About the Book

Matt Tucker has designed a global defense system that will protect humanity from nuclear annihilation.  His brilliant college research delivers the technology that allows for an affordable space deployed weapons defense

system.  It far surpasses the United State’s unrelenting dream of ‘Star Wars’,

better know as the Strategic Defense Initiative.

But suddenly, everything seems to fall apart!

His best friend and co-inventor, Jonathan Moss is murdered and it quickly becomes clear to Matt that a hostile terrorist group wants his defense program for personal gain.

And why not?  It’s worth billions of dollars on the open market.  But to Matt, the most frightful element is that the government that eventually ends up with it will have the power to control the world and the future of mankind itself.

In his efforts to sabotage his own invention, Matt learns about the dangerous world of espionage and how weapon sales work.  He also learns that this business most often employs some of life’s most wicked characters.

Enter Alan Segee, CIA special investigator.  Alan also happens to be a double agent and his first loyalty is acting as advocate for another foreign presence,  the Bosnian JNA. His employment in Washington  is nothing more than a well-executed plan to infiltrate the most impermeable agency in the world.

His whole existence is dedicated to furthering the efforts of his terrorist comrades and he knows that having possession of Matt’s invention can do just that.

Matt decides that the best thing he can do is to return to his place of employment, Vector Research, gather up his invention (that is the form of a computer program) and destroy it.  

There is only one problem though.  The CIA is closely following him and he is certain that they have plans to eliminate him.  In a daring mission to thieve his own creation he narrowly escapes death while escaping in a corporate aircraft.  Twenty minutes after the plane leaves the ground, it is shot down by a US military fighter pilot who was given the order  ‘posse comitatus’ to eliminate him.

CIA Chief Aid John Donnelly is the man who engineered the order and he then has the merciless task of notifying Matt’s wife Allison Tucker of her husbands’ untimely end.  This news morosely interrupts what is currently a very pleasant time in Allison’s life.  Allison, alone with her friend Melissa have recently experienced a milestone of success in their own careers as entertainers.  Their happiness is short lived when Allison learns from the CIA Chief, that her husband was a traitor and defector that had to be eliminated by the US government.

Allison falls apart, but only for a short while.  She miraculously pulls her life together in an effort to clear Matt’s name.   Allison puts her nose to the grindstone and soon she and her singing partner become very famous record industry entertainers.  Still, life is very difficult for Allison without Matt even though she has the consolation of her daughter Kelsey, she knows that life is going to be lonely without him.

In a remarkable twist of fate,  Matt actually survives the crash.  The plane ends up in pieces on the beautiful grounds of a Jesuit monastery in Loretto, Pennsylvania and Matt is taken in by a very astute group of monks who hide him and nurse him back to consciousness.

When Matt wakes up,  he is more than bewildered…..he can’t remember a thing!  An extreme case of amnesia  has wiped his memory clean.  

The head abbot at the monastery, Brother Daniel is a renowned writer who through his widely acclaimed work has many worldly acquaintances.  It is Daniel that figures out how important the tapes are that were found in Matt’s baggage and makes sure that they are disposed of prop

About the Author

Greg Baughman and his wife Brenda live with their two children in Frederick, MD. He is the National Director of Hardware & Systems for Quadramed, a firm that writes software applications for users that work in the health care industry. With a solid background in Information Technology, the most difficult obstacle he had to face while writing his first novel A HIGHER POWER was in trying to keep it modestly technical. In his spare time he likes to write, golf, and play in his oversized yard with his young children.